


Rising Star

by opalmatrix



Category: Tarot (Divination Cards)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen, Rain, Rituals, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3471266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the rainy season, a young woman performs a ritual for her people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rising Star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



The sun was sinking in the west as Mayim and her father walked eastward from the village. They did not look behind them. The winter rains were ending and the days were growing longer, but the nights were still chill. Mayim could feel the cold seeping beneath the simple, ungirded robe she wore. It was of fine bleached white wool with a thread of blue over each shoulder from front to back, and she had helped make it: carding and spinning, bleaching and dying, weaving and sewing. She wanted to clutch her arms about herself, but she could not because she carried a small ewer in each hand. They were full and heavy with water. Her feet were bare in the cold dust.

They climbed out of the valley of the village, through the olive groves, and over the rise into the next vale, where there was a spring. Even when the wells in the village sank low during the dry season, this spring never failed. Willows and myrtles grew close by it. The people called it the Well of the Holy Presence: Maayan Shekhinah.

When father and daughter were ten paces from the grove of the spring, they stopped, and he pulled his headcloth so that it covered his eyes. Mayim set the pitchers down cautiously, so they would not spill, and pulled the white robe over her head and off. She set it carefully into his hands. "May your words and your rite be fruitful, my daughter," he said. He turned away, uncovered his eyes, and walked up out of the valley of the spring. He did not look behind him.

Mayim shivered as the scant hair of her body tried vainly to rise and warm her. But there was no time to huddle in cold and fear. She picked up her ewers and walked onward, her head high, as befitted one to whom a great honor had fallen. She did not flinch when the twigs scratched her skin or the rocks bruised her feet. She walked until she stood at the pool where the spring bubbled up from the stones. Soft-leaved herbs grew there in abundance, cool and lush and strange under feet used to dry dust and grasses.

She knelt carefully there, the muscles of her arms like iron to hold the pitchers steady. She did not spill one drop. Carefully, she shifted back on one knee, that she might slide the other foot into the pool. Cautiously her toes dug into the sand and the pebbles, until she was steady as the stones of the slope behind her.

Slowly she raised the two pitchers, the blue pitcher over the waters, the red pitcher over the earth. Slowly she chanted the praises of the Holy Name and his lieutenant Af-Bri, who brought the rains. She forgot the chill, the dark, the fact that she was alone. Her foot was steady in the water that brings life. Her knee was firm on the earth and the green plants that fed all that lived. Her voice rose and her song quickened, and she was smiling as she brought the chant to its end: 

> May the Holiest send rain from the heavenly stronghold,  
>  To slake the earth with crystal showers,  
>  You have named water the symbol of Your might,  
>  All that breathe life rejoice in it —  
>  Revive and preserve those who praise Your powers of rain!

From the pitchers that she had filled at dawn in the heart of their village, she poured water into the pool of the unfailing spring and onto the earth by its side: from the blue pitcher, for water throughout the dry season; from the red pitcher, for water to sustain life for her people. She did not pour it in haste but poured it as gently as the first rain of winter on the parched lands of autumn. Her arms did not tremble as she poured every drop of the sacred water, until each pitcher was empty.

It was done. She rose from her knee, the pitchers hanging from each hand. Now she was just a cold, tired girl in the dark, unclothed. She turned her face toward home, hurrying as much as she dared over the cool plants, the dusty ground, and up the slope. She did not look behind her.

Her mother met her at the crest of the hill, the white robe in her arms. Smiling, she clothed her daughter once more, this time girding the garment about with sash of many-colored threads. "You have done well, my lamb. The Shekhinah was pleased."

"Mother! How can you know that for certain?"

"Raise your eyes to the heavens, my precious one."

And there, in the west, in the deep blue of evening, the Queen of Heaven shone, brilliant and steady among the lesser stars: Nogah, the one who comes by evening or by morning, brighter than Mayim had ever seen before.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a made-up ritual, of course, but it was inspired by the Sukkot service involving the lulav, which is one of the most wonderfully earth-oriented rites of Judaism. As I was thinking of Purim and the Tarot cards, it came to me that what The Star is doing in the Rider-Waite deck (and all its many descendants) looks like some sort of special celebration of water. When I found that the rainy season in Israel ends in March, I knew I had my timeframe. The final chant is adapted from [The Prayer For Rain](http://www.chabad.org/kids/article_cdo/aid/4803/jewish/The-Prayer-For-Rain.htm) at Chabad.org, which has a bit of discussion about the angel Af Bri, who brings the rain.
> 
> Nogah is a traditional name for Venus, and it is used nowadays as a girl's name in Israel. Mayim's name, however, means "waters."
> 
> I am not sure from which variant of the Rider-Waite deck this example of The Star came, but I found the image on [this site](http://www.tarotteachings.com/star-tarot-card-meanings.html).


End file.
